"The last series of paintings by Gian Piero Gasparini Profundum-Nigrum is a lively centre, from which many lines irradiate: Matter- Body - Intimacy. Painting is as sacred as the art of creating, expressed by the supremely physical process of putting paint on a canvas. Profundum Nigrum could be read as a work in progress, a development, as physical as it is symbolic, of his journey as an artist. Through the saturation of the background and the exploration of the figure, we come to better understand the direction that brought him here and now, all through the previous works: Faces, Logo, Amerikaos, Street Heart. Starting from the colourful pop of universally recognisable faces and symbols, Gasparini now intensifies his work on the naked canvas, to then movehis eyes and his hands onto the full body, in often cases (and in this series for the first time) his own. In virtue of this material and spiritual journey, the artist evolves therefore onto a universality of the most intimatefeelings and sensations. The stratification of Gasparini’s work expresses here the humanity of each and every individual: at the start the artist intervenes ontothe blank canvas, by patching it up first, and blackening it afterwards, thereby preparing for the naked body an already wounded support, but which has also already received the needed care. The skin stands out from the dark, the muscle glistens; where the body tries to hide itself, there the light shines, as a beam, to illuminateevery detail, every passion and emotion. The canvas and the body in the Profundum Nigrum series stand to symbolize the whole human condition (la Condition humaine, as per the writer André Malraux), seen today, but undoubtedly common through the revolving of time. Regardless of the undeniable scientific and technological progress that have simplified our lives, the question about the sense of life itself remains unanswered: that empty space is here filled by the shreds of canvas, the wounds, the marks we bare on our body and soul - and they are at once the injury as well as the medicament and the substance that constitutes our beinghuman, physically and spiritually." Emanuele Beluffi

Gian Piero Gasparini technique involves in subtracting color from a uniform dark background. The silhouette of the subject will emerge from the dark with the use of various bleaches and a sense of detail and depth will be added later with the use of acrylics and oils. The canvas is a linen one of a selected brand unique in texture and strength, it sustains a particular preparation being cut into small square bits which are woven together and glued on a wooden sheet after being soaked in a dark color.